S.F. officials see progress in 2nd year of test scores

Katherine Seligman, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, July 1, 1999

1999-07-01 04:00:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO; CALIFORNIA -- This year's higher test scores at San Francisco's public schools are partly the result of reduced class size in the lower grades and a longer day for middle schoolers, school officials say.

Test scores at most district schools edged upward this year in reading, math and language, with students in almost every category outperforming their peers statewide.

It was the second year that California schoolchildren, from grades 2 through 11, have been required to take the Stanford 9 exam, a national test of basic skills.

"There is always more to do and more funding needed to do it, but our students are still making great progress," said school board President Juanita Owens.

State schools chief Delaine Eastin expressed similar satisfaction with statewide results, which showed improvement in almost every grade level and category, but largely were still below the national average.

Students statewide scored below the national average in reading and spelling at every grade level and in math at every grade level except second and sixth, where students were at the 50th percentile. In language, the state's students still lag below the 50th percentile in each grade but sixth and seventh, where students were at 50th and 51st percentiles respectively.

High school students were below the national average in science and social science except 11th grade social science, where California students scored in the 57th percentile.

Eastin expressed frustration with a snafu in test results that rendered scores of students with limited English unusable, creating a delay in determining how students are performing in the new post-bilingual education era.

The test publisher, Harcourt Brace Educational Management, apparently mistakenly lumped together scores of limited English speakers with those who had been reclassified as fluent, skewing results for more than 100,000 test takers, state officials said Wednesday. Eastin said the mistake had been brought to her attention by officials in several districts, including San Jose Unified, who said the number of test-takers in the limited English category didn't match the test results.

"We did a calculation on our own," said Maureen Davidson, spokeswoman for the San Jose district, "and we saw that their totals for LEP (limited English proficiency) were wrong."

Eastin said the reconfigured scores should be available by July 15.

All in all, the results looked good to school officials - if they ignored a new portion of the test that asked harder, more complex questions aimed at assessing whether kids were keeping up with revised state standards in math and language. By 11th grade, the "augmented" math portion, which asked 50 questions on calculus, trigonometry and advanced algebra, stumped almost two-thirds of the state's students and 60 percent of San Francisco's.

The results from the augmented part are being sent to students' homes with a "Dear Parent" letter explaining that this is the test's first year. State and local school officials said it represented new standards that had been adopted by the state education board, but hadn't yet filtered down to the classroom.

"We were worried about the personal effects (of the new test scores,)" said Gwen Stephens, director of the student assessment division of the state Department of Education. "We don't want parents saying, "You can't go swimming this summer because of your math score.' "

Overall results on the Stanford 9 show, however, that scores "are moving in the right direction," Eastin said Wednesday. Students scored an average of 2 to 4 points higher in all academic areas and at every grade level except for reading at grades 7, 9 and 11 and for history and social science at grades 9 through 11. The largest gains were in the lower grades and in math.

"These test results show that teachers are making a difference with students in the face of great odds," said Wayne Johnson, president of the California Teachers Association, who also pointed out that California was still 41st in the nation in how much money it spends per student.

San Francisco students moved forward in 29 out of 43 grade-level and subject categories and stayed the same in nine. Most gains were similar to those made statewide, but third-graders leaped five percentiles, from 51 to 56 in math, and six percentiles in language, from 44 to 50.

"Where kids have had the benefit of small class size for three years we're seeing some nice results," said Maria Santos, assistant superintendent for curriculum improvement and professional development. "Kids are being able to show what they know. That's very promising."

Officials also credited an extra class period for sixth through ninth grades with boosting scores in middle school. That longer school day, however, may be cut this fall because of money problems.

More than half of San Francisco's students scored at or above the 50th percentile in math, language and spelling in nearly all grades. Fewer than half hit that mark in 10th-grade language and fourth- and eighth-grade spelling. Reading was the weakest subject, with most students - except those in the second grade - falling below the 50th percentile.

Across the district, many individual schools posted noticeable gains, including Alvarado, Commodore Sloat, Garfield, R.L. Stevenson and Sheridan elementary schools. Numbers went up at almost all the district's middle schools and stayed about even or were slightly up at high schools.

Another school that made progress was Edison. In a highly controversial move by the district, management of the troubled school was handed over this year to the private Edison Project. Principal Barbara Karvelis credited her staff's hard work but attributed the gains "100 percent to Edison." Scores - still among the lowest in the district - went from the 18th to the 30th percentile in fourth-grade reading and from the 16th to the 28th percentile in third-grade language.

"It's the Edison design that made this happen," Karvelis said. "It took a lot of energy to move this far. . . . If we stay on track, we expect to show remarkable results."

Scores tumbled in some areas at several elementary schools, such as Grattan, where fifth-grade math fell from the 80th percentile to the 43rd, and Junipero Serra, where third-grade reading went from the 52nd to the 33rd percentile, and math plummeted from the 72nd to the 31st percentile.

Santos said such "cold data" could be misleading, however, because adding just a few new students to a classroom of 20 could radically change scores. She said the district would track individual student scores to see how groups performed over time. Only then, she said, could researchers tell whether there is a particular problem at any school.

"When you have a school that might have 20 or 30 percent transiency, that's going to have an impact," she said.

"The studies we'll be doing are more in depth. We'll be able to track the ones who stay."

Another problem with the data, said school officials, is that they compare California's students to a "normed" population that has little in common with state students. In the normed group, for example, about 2 percent are kids who are limited English speakers, and 37 percent are ethnic minorities. In San Francisco, a third speak limited English, and 88 percent are minorities.

"This norming is done by the testing company," said Santos. "If we were able to look at a standards-based test instead of a norm-based test, you as a parent would get a picture of your kid's actual ability or performance level."

Eastin said that despite problems with miscalculations on results this year and poor scores on the difficult augmented section, the state should stick to its test format.

"I would point out that maybe this isn't the perfect test, but we have to measure student achievement, and we are seeing changes . . . ," she said. "We've got to stop starting over again the next time there's a problem. We need to set standards, keep to them and test students." &lt;